Care-full climate justice organising

Feminist, Indigenous, and disability theories and activisms have long called for more attention to care–both as an ethic and practice–in response to environmental and social issues. Although care work is vital for collective survival, it is relatively devalued and trivialised in society and under-examined in climate justice research. Emerging critical research suggests that care work is central to how climate justice communities understand and respond to climate change and interlocking structural violences. Yet, there is limited climate justice scholarship that attends to the intersections of care and climate movements. At this juncture, this article draws on empirical reflections from a participatory action research project with a climate justice community in Western Australia to explore the centrality of care work in climate justice organising. It offers heuristic for care-full climate justice organising, bringing theories of climate justice and care together. The article concludes with a call for more care-full climate justice research and practices that grapple with the challenges and complexities of scaling care work in times that demand it.